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Clarity MR caps for external crossover?

I'm in the process of selecting crossover caps for my Tannoy 215 DMT II. Clarity, Mundorf and Duelund have caught my attention after reading Tony Gee and Jon L shootouts. I need pairs of 4.8uF. 36.8uF and 200uF caps, so the project using any of these brands is expensive, and staggeringly expensive if I go with Duelund. Would appreciate hearing from people who have used these caps in crossover applications.

Thanks in advance,
Jay
jburidan
bryoncunningham
890 posts
 
I recently initiated a thread on the same topic, which you might find informative. You can read it here. Clarity, Mundorf, and Duelund all came up.

Wish I could advise more, but I'm just starting down this road myself. Good luck.

Bryon
magfan
1,583 posts
 
http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

An EXTENSIVE list of caps and thumbnail review of each.
Name your price: name your quality level: Take a chance!

Some combos with bypass caps are listed and given good marks.

Some of the downline Clarity caps are both affordable and an improvement on as-issued caps.

My panels come with Solen caps. Easily improved upon without taking out a home loan.
dan_ed
2,451 posts
 
We don't know what the speaker system is but I'll offer some thoughts, FWIW. The MRs are very nice to my ears. The lesser Claritys seem to be not much different in sound to Sonicaps. So if you can afford the MR, go for it.

Actually, the 2% Solens are pretty good but no where near the MR and other caps.

Some of your values are rather large and I'm guessing at xover points around 100, 500, and 4K? If possible, you may want to think about an active line level solution for the 100Hz pole. Anyway, your best bet for improvement while keeping the cost low is to by-pass larger value caps with smaller value, high-dollar caps. Some folks don't like the sound with by-pass caps so as usual you just have to try for yourself.

Good luck and have fun. Let us know how things turn out.
johnk's avatar
johnk
1,975 posts
 
Make sure you keep your stock networks what your doing may not improve sound quality over Tannoys network
magfan
1,583 posts
 
I'll get ZERO traction with this, but you may want to look into improving the inductor(s) in the bass circuit. This has the greatest need for power handling and may benefit from air cores. Stock inductors are probably iron/laminated/ferite cored. Matching DCR will gain power handling / headroom and not change the crossover point.
The other thing I see on 'stock' crossovers is incorrect placement of inductors.
Many are on the same plane and edge to edge where they interact....badly.
ALL coils should be at right angles to one another with as much spacing as reasonably possible. An external crossover maximizes these possibilities while keeping the capacitors safe the pressure changes inside an enclosure which breed microphonic effects.
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